Solitary Confinement

Psalm 22: 1-15


There are many hackles that rise when the subject of our penal system comes up. The issue of keeping our population safe from the criminal element gives rise to enough polemic to destroy any good time. But there is one strange statistic I recently ran into that made me even more disappointed with the way we approach people who have committed crimes than I had been previously.

I found out that wardens are united in their desire to abolish one of the “normalities” of prison. Affectionately known as the hole or the cooler solitary confinement is seen by these very pragmatic and experiential experts in the discipline of keeping some sort of order within a pressure cooker as counter productive. Some of them put forward more idealistic bases for their desire to dump this punitive institution. The word torture comes up regularly, supported by studies of psychologists that demonstrate the sanity bending cost of isolating individuals for prolonged periods of time. But,others of the wardens, arguing more from a practical perspective say that it does nothing except make the inmates more nuts than they were when they were first dumped into the hole. And the wardens don’t want to be doing anything to make inmates more nuts. It is counter productive. It is directly opposed to their mission of keeping order in the prison.

So why not abolish it? If these experts are unanimous, what’s the problem? The answer is simple. Voters and therefore politicians want to make sure these criminals suffer. Getting rid of the hole would be a sign of going light on crime. Reality doesn’t seem to matter. Expert opinion is irrelevant.

The worst torture a human being can suffer is a sense of isolation. It has been shown to kill infants. Taken care of in every other way, without the intimacy of touch they die. We adults may be better at functioning alone, but flourishing is another story.

This psalm starts with the wail of an abandoned child and goes down hill from there. With few glimmers during the free-fall of despair, we are confronted with a hopeless human being. But it starts with isolation.

There are few things I fear, truly fear. I’m not courageous. It’s just that I’ve lived through fire and blood and humiliation and failure and pain and my own stupidity enough times to realize that they hurt, but here I am, still cheering for the N Y Giants and agog about butterflies. Life goes on. I guess you call that perspective. But down deep inside there is this demon named abandonment, Abby for short, that can yank my chain even on a good day. Without love, without community, without the sense that even in darkness that still small voice will whisper to me, I am lost.

I am grateful for this psalm. I am more grateful that Jesus was willing to use it to express his loneliness on the cross. It reminds me that the Lord has been here before me, even in the darkness of my own isolation. But I can’t rest thinking that we deliberately do that to people. I’d like to hear Jesus’ comment on that one. I wonder what He’d say to us.